Educational Resources

NOTE: In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the education and editorial staff at MBARI have gathered some educational resources that may be useful to parents and students while sheltering in place. This page lists a small collection of activities and lesson plans from MBARI and various other organizations that can be used at home.

There are several educational resources that are available at MBARI although we rely heavily on our partner institution (the Monterey Bay Aquarium) for much of our public outreach. Teacher Professional Development opportunities at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are posted.

MBARI does have an educator professional development workshop that generally runs in the summer for a week. This program is called Education And Research: Testing Hypotheses (EARTH) and the objective is to get more real data into the classrooms. The workshop is open to all educators in the United States and the application process includes a cover letter (stating why you would like to participate and why you should be selected) as well as an evaluation rubric showing how you used and evaluated one of the currently available EARTH activities. You can find these activities and more about the EARTH program.

MBARI has a formal seminar program that is open to the public, our seminars are generally on Wednesday mornings from 11 am to noon. You can find more information on the program and upcoming speakers on the seminar blog below. NOTE: the 2020 seminar program is moving to a Virtual Webinar program – Stay tuned and check back for speakers or follow us on social media to get updates.

MBARI’s summer internship program started in 1997 and currently runs for ten weeks (June-August) every year. The application process for 2021 (June 7 – August 13) is now open (Deadline is February 22, 2021 at 1700 hours PST). We accept up to 12 interns each year although some years we do have additional interns with external funding. Visit the link below for more information about the program and the application process.

MBARI is also working with the National Science Foundation-funded Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) and the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array (GO-BGC) to facilitate the adoption of ocean profiling floats by schools interested in working with real data – see link below for more information.

MBARI collaborated with a National Science Foundation-funded Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) and has some science kits available for loan. You do have to arrange pickup and drop-off of these kits, you can find more information (all the lesson plans are posted online) and signup instructions below.